IBox

IBox (Internet in a Box) was one of the first commercially available Internet connection software packages available for sale to the public. O'Reilly & Associates (now O'Reilly Media) created and produced the package, in collaboration with Spry, Inc. Spry, Inc. also started up a commercial Internet service provider (ISP) called InterServ.^[1][2]

The IBox software included the Winsock program and TCP/IP stack that were needed to connect a computer running Microsoft Windows to the Internet in 1994.^[3] The IBox package also included a licensed copy of the NCSA Mosaic web browser called AIR Mosaic,^[4][5] AIR Mail (an email client), AIR News (an NNTP news client), AIR Telnet, AIR Gopher, and an FTP Network File Manager.

Combined with InterServ's dial-up access, Internet in a Box provided a complete solution for members of the general public to access the Internet, a network previously available almost exclusively to government and collegiate users, or to the public only indirectly through e-mail gateways provided by hosted systems such as BBSes and CompuServe. The inclusion of a web browser further gave access to the then-nascent World Wide Web.

The pioneering Internet book from O'Reilly, Ed Krol's 'Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog' (US-1993) was included in the US product. The European edition of the product also included Sue Schofield's 'UK Internet Book' (UK 1994).

Spry, Inc. was a small software company headed up by David Pool in Seattle, Washington. Spry was the first company licensing the Mosaic Web browser source code.^[6] In 1995 CompuServe bought Spry, Inc. for $100 million in cash and stock of H&R Block (the parent company of CompuServe).

• Information Week article Archived 2006-08-22 at the Wayback Machine about the purchase of Spry, Inc.
• Internet writer Sue Schofield's Web page.